Tuesday, February 19, 2019

'I have stolen some of the light which drenches you this midnight to wish you all the islands in the world and every one a different kind of peace."

These lines from Northern Lights by Jo Shapcott have been among my most treasured poetry quotes since the day I first read them and which I'd written on the flyleaf of Sea Room by Adam Nicolson. I've used the words so many times in so many books about islands, jotted them in notebooks, sent them as a sort of blessing to friends. I'm not sure when I first embarked on the Sea Room journey to the Shiants all those years ago either, before realising I didn't actually want to go there at that precise reading moment. Maybe because we were doing island visiting of our own to Orkney for several years, but scouring my shelves for some armchair journeys for 2019 I had added this one to the pile.

No problems this time, I was up for the voyage, this story of one man, three islands and half a million puffins.

Once 'owned' by Compton Mackenzie, Adam Nicolson soon makes it clear that 'owning' islands' is not as straightforward as it might seem. Yes, his father Nigel Nicolson, son of Vita Sackville-West, bought the Shiants, five miles off shore from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, for £1400 inherited from his grandmother. Nigel was an undergraduate at the time, it was 1937 and £1400 would have bought a great deal more for his money, investments that would have been worth far more than the islands are today, but really that wasn't the point.

'Islands feed an appetite for the absolute. They are removed from the human world, from its business and noise.'

...and as Adam Nicolson explains, young Nigel felt 'enlarged and excited' by the ownership, happy to find a place of solitude and the wherewithal to see nature in close-up and the sea so huge. But 'ownership' of an island is a tricky cultural business to square in a place where attitudes towards absent English landlords are less than friendly or understanding. History does them no favours, but then it would seem the local Clan Stewart were equally to be feared in terms of dominance and brutality. The islands, traditionally for two generations of Nicolsons now, are handed over to the eldest son at the age of twenty-one; Nigel to Adam, and Adam now to his son Tom. The question of 'ownership' is one that Adam Nicolson sensibly addresses in the first chapter before going on to explain the family's policy of allowing open access to the Shiants, thus denouncing any charge of exclusive rights.

'Land - particularly land that is out on the edge of things, and particularly land that is a rich concentration of the marvels of the natural world - is to be shared.'

If you can get there you are allowed stay there.

And meanwhile Sea Room, first published in 2001, 'is an attempt to share the Shiants.'

Consider it done, because I've had the most wonderful journey and sojourn over the first few weeks of the year alongside virtual puffins, gannets, shags. I've explored the three islands, Garbh Eilean, Eilean an Targhe and Eilean Mhuire for days on end, navigated my way around the rocky shores, investigated caves and beaches, found relics and delved into the history of this amazing place, wished I'd had Magnus along to deal with the rats and understand more about islands than I ever thought.

Why had it never occurred to me that in the 1600s these islands might have been relatively safe places to live, perhaps much safer from marauders than on the mainland. That's not to deny how tough it must have been because when the weather hits it takes no prisoners to say nothing of being self-sufficient.

And culturally how the concept of the 'island' has shifted from a place of imprisonment (think Robinson Crusoe) to the magical places espoused by Gaugin and Rousseau.

On the subject of Rattus rattus and an island overrun with them in their tens of thousands, a four year project to eradicate them has been declared a success, which must be a relief to all who land there. They were very familiar creatures not averse to sharing a pillow.

And there is much investigation of who may have lived on the islands in centuries past. I sensed Adam Nicolson's infectious joy at re-imagining the various pasts. When the evidence may be as extensive but as limited as a midden containing more than a hundred thousand limpet shells who can know the reasons for their consumption, but let's imagine, and I did.

'The Shiants are a place where the deepest past seems more nakedly present than any other I know.'

On the way I've had some fun with the Leuchtterm1917 (dotted) and the washi tape, alongside maps and pictures and a glue stick, because I'm using it as a Travel Journal for the year (that mostly stays at home) and writing about and around each journey-book I read.

Look stranger, as this island now...Stand stable hereAnd silent beThat through the channels of the earMay wander like a riverThe swaying sound of the sea.

W.H.Auden

Meanwhile, if you have read Sea Room please do share your thoughts in comments...

Friday, February 01, 2019

Thank you for all the kind and encouraging comments about the Tinker's Cott / dovegreyretreats endeavour...we already have some bookings which is very exciting, and we are really looking forward to our season. Included in any visit is some time to chat about books (and quilts) with me should anyone want to do so (and so far it seems they would like that) and as a separate venture I am hoping to offer a few 'dovegreydays' for small groups in the future.

I envisage a day spent in and around chez dovegrey, with bookish chat in the Book Room, walks along the lane and around some of the places that I have been writing about on here for so long...to the woods for the bluebells, across to the village church for bells of a different sort, down to the Tamar. Maybe an afternoon pot of tea in the summerhouse and a Show & Tell of quilts... just a chance to get away from it all, escape the world and recharge the batteries. Hopefully we will have a very simple website up and running dreckly with more details, but if you think a dovegreyday might be in order please do make contact with us on dovegreyretreats at gmail.com and we will be in touch once we have firmed up plans and dates.

Meanwhile more reading journeys beckon for 2019 and with two completed already I thought I would share those trips I have booked from the armchair.

January has seen me head underground with an advance reading copy of Underland by Robert Macfarlane. The book is under strict review embargo until April 30th but suffice to say I think the world is about to be stunned by the heft and power of this book. When we heard him speak at the North Cornwall Book Festival, Horatio Clare suggested that Underland had the potential to be a latter-day equivalent to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and I am looking forward to hearing Horatio interview Robert at Hay Festival in May. I have Team Underland out here busy reading the book too, so we are going to gather in a cave somewhere for our discussions and will report back.

I surfaced for some fresh air and sky and puffins, yet still beguiled by an acute awareness of what lay beneath, and with my Sea Bands in place set sail for the Shiants with Adam Nicolson and Sea Room (more of which dreckly). I have had a wonderful time there.

Incidentally, do Sea Bands really work?

Feeling hopelessly sick over Moscow on one of my return flights from New Zealand, the very kind woman in the seat next to me said ' Try these,' and immediately slipped them on my wrists. Was it my imagination or did the nausea slowly subside. Anyway, I now wear them as a matter of course, even if it's all in the mind, because I can think of nothing worse than being as sick as on a long haul flight.

My first February journey is Last Train to Hilversum - a journey in search of the magic of radio by Charlie Connelly and published by Bloomsbury.

'Despite the all-pervading influence of television ninety per cent of people in Britain still listen to the radio, clocking up over a billion hours of listening between us every week. It's a background to all our lives: we wake up to our clock radios, we have the radio on in the kitchen as we make the tea, it's on at our workplaces and in our cars. From Listen With Mother to the illicit thrill of tuning into pirate stations like Radio Caroline; from receiving a musical education from John Peel or having our imagination unlocked by Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; from school-free summers played out against a soundtrack of Radio One and Test Match Special to more grown-up soundtracks of the Today programme on Radio 4 and the solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast - in many ways, our lives can be measured in kilohertz...

Part nostalgic eulogy, part social history, part travelogue, Last Train To Hilversum is Connelly's love letter to radio, exploring our relationship with the medium from its earliest days to the present in an attempt to recreate and revisit the world he entered on his childhood evenings on the dial as he set out on the radio journey of a lifetime.'

I bet I'm not the only one who can instantly conjure up the sight of the huge wooden box with the mesh of very tactile golden beige fabric on the front, the crackle and glow, the dials and the little red line that twiddled along the strip of light across the bottom, past all those mysterious words and places, Light Service, Home Service and I'm sure you could go to places like Reykjavik (Rakejarvik to 6 year old me) Warsaw and Prague (Pragyew to six-year-old me) too and of course Luxembourg. Doubtless there will be reminders of Billy Cotton's Band Show while the Sunday roast was being served, Two Way Family Favourites with Cliff and Jean, and then Sing Something Simple on a Sunday evening with the Cliff Adams Singers (I didn't even have to look that up), the melancholy moment when you knew the weekend was almost over and school beckoned again.

And despite best intentions, nor did I ever get around to reading Attention All Shipping - A journey around the shipping forecast by Charlie Connelly, so what do you think...on with the Sea Bands and set sail on that one too?

Friday, January 18, 2019

A lot of writers were kind enough to take me along with them on their journeys last year...

It is by chance that I seem to have been on a journey each month (more or less) with these twelve amazing books. Links back to original scribbles with just my thoughts on paddling down the Yukon still to come...

Central to all the journey reading before and since has to have been that June read of The Odyssey. I really wasn't prepared for the impact of this book. The understanding of all that had gone before and all that I have read since. I see it everywhere to say nothing of now being especially appreciative of a 'rosy-fingered dawn' when it happens. I'm hoping to read it again through next June too; it's a book that set the seal on summer.

I've been scouring the shelves for a few more journeys that might take my fancy this year. A sort of counter to all the holiday adverts that proliferate about now and knowing that we have committed ourselves to a project nearer home that will preclude much journeying for a while. It will be spur of the moment if we do.

Meanwhile nothing is certain in the journey reading either. Much depends on mood and whim but these seem like a good starter for some virtual packing and setting off...

Hungary and Transylvania with Patrick Leigh Fermor in Between the Woods and the Water

Stones of Aran - A Pilgrimage with Tim Robinson

Dublin to Tibet on a bicycle with Dervla Murphy in Full Tilt. (I do still have the padded attire from that 100 miles plus in New Zealand, might as well get the wear out them.)

From Wales to New Zealand and the Himalayas with Rebecca Loncraine's post-humous memoir Skybound about learning to fly a glider.

And perhaps a tramp around the Lake District with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in O Joy For Me! an account of the origins of fell-walking in the late eighteenth century by Keir Davidson.

And at the last minute I feel I must add another by Adam Nicolson as it was thanks to his patient, diligent and accessible explanation of Homer that I set off on The Odyssey in the first place, so Sea Room is added to the pile of potentials.

Meanwhile please do share any of your own journey-reading recommendations, because nothing is booked yet, I am armchair-ready for the off ...

Thursday, February 05, 2015

Fearing that I may run out of journey books (unlikely) which are my reading choice of the moment, I nipped into Waterstone's the other day (any excuse)

I really wanted to take a look at Britannia Obscura by Joanne Parker because, though I have it on reserve at the library, I was in the mood for a book treat and this was the one I had in mind...yes. even to the extent of paying full price and buying it in a real bookshop.

"What is the shape of Britain? The country’s outline, looking a little like a wingless dragon, is instantly recognisable on any map or globe. But jostling within that familiar profile are countless vying maps of the country. Some of these are founded on rock – or on the natural features of the land. But far more are built on dreams – on human activity, effort, and aspiration. Britannia Obscura is an exploration of just a few of these surprising hidden Britains....

Together, the book’s chapters reveal that Britain is a country with countless competing centres and ceaselessly shifting borders – a land where one person’s sleepy, remote and unexceptional province will always be the busy heart of another’s map. The book also demonstrates that when viewed through the right lenses, Britain is a surprisingly large small island, which a lifetime of exploration could never exhaust. Ultimately, Britannia Obscura is a book that aims to make its readers more familiar with Britain but also excited about the endless possibilities for surprise that lie just around familiar corners."

I was short on time so I asked at the counter. Now I have this high expectation that if I worked in a bookshop I would know every single book in stock. Of course I couldn't possibly, but I'd have a go, and at least I'd find it on the computer and be enthused, and say 'Oh that sounds good...' and then find it on the shelf for the customer, because really I'd want the customer to buy it wouldn't I.

But staff were too busy for customers. They seemed to be doing things called stock sheets. There was a bit of desultory and inattentive typing into the screen and some vague looking around from behind the counter before I was directed upstairs to look in Travel Writing.

Up I went and I couldn't see hide not hair of it and I searched for ages.

By this time I was thinking Amazon. Cheaper, easier, why bother with this and was about to stomp out in a huff give up, when I glanced at the table and saw this instead, Slow Train to Switzerland by Diccon Bewes.

"In June 1863 an English lady set off by train on the trip of a lifetime: Thomas Cook s first Conducted Tour of Switzerland. A century and a half later, travel writer Diccon Bewes, author of the bestselling Swiss Watching, decided to go where she went and see what she saw. Guided by her diary, he followed the same route to discover how much had changed and how much hadn t. She went in search of adventure, he went in search of her, and found far more than he expected. Slow Train to Switzerland is the captivating account of two trips through the Alps: hers glimpsing the future of travel, his revisiting its past. Together they make a journey to remember. This is a tale of trains and tourists, of the British and the Swiss, of a Victorian traveller and a modern-day Englishman abroad. It is the story of a tour that changed both Switzerland and the world of travel forever. "

Just the ticket, a little trip to Switzerland from the sofa..., but I hate the way a book, with a cover like an old railway poster, makes me buy it, especially when I am in a strop and thinking I am not giving this shop any of my money in a rush and not making considered decisions. But I am utterly powerless in the face of these designs, and to any authors, designers, publishers out there...really if you are undecided you just can't go wrong, you'd sell at least one.

So this is how my non-buying strop turned into a reluctant purchase and in the event I can't wait to embark.

Is it just me...

Would you be nice and helpful to your customers...

Would you go and find the book for them..

Is it any wonder people buy books on Amazon...

Would you have bought Slow Train to Switzerland on the strength of that cover...

Constants...

Team Tolstoy

Team TolstoyA year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book.

Team Tolstoy BookmarkDon't know your Bolkonskys from your Rostovs?
An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.

Port Eliot Festival

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